Announcing the first cohort of Startup Next Hong Kong Fall 2015

Startup Next, a pre-acceleration program run by Techstars, is kicking off in Hong Kong with the help of Nest VC. The free program provides local entrepreneurs the opportunity to work with great mentors and coaches to get their business to the next level.

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We have been organising Startup Weekend in Hong Kong since 2011 and through the 12 editions, we were able to positively impact over 1,000 participants. We are humbled by the passion people show during the intense 54 hours program. Complete strangers come together to create their very own tech startups and with hard work, make it a sustainable and fast growing company. We start to see the important impact of our events on the Hong Kong Startup Ecosystem and that encourages us to move forward.

Based on general feedback from Startup Weekend, we discovered that we could and needed to go one step further to help entrepreneurs in the following areas:

A deeper dive in the customer discovery and development processes;

More hands-on mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs;

Clear focus on preparing projects to successfully apply and get accepted into world-class accelerators and raise seed funding.

To help startups with these challenges, we have brought Startup Next to Hong Kong for the first time! As an example of its quality in different cities around the globe, the program has assisted over 20 startups to get into top accelerators, including Techstars and 500 Startups, while 11 more startups have collectively raised $11.1M for their seed rounds in 2014.

How does Startup Next work?

Startup Next is a six weeks, mentor driven pre-acceleration program that brings established teams together for three hour sessions on one evening each week.

The three key components of the program are:

Working 1:1 with top local mentors to address the main challenges each startup is facing, in order to help get the team focused on growth.

Learning from successful entrepreneurs about their experience on various topics like Product / Market fit or funding, which are crucial for founders to understand.

Getting feedback from a group of mentors on the strategy, execution and startup pitch.

Startup Next Hong Kong is run in a collaboration with Nest VC and a number of community partners, venues and the most amazing people helping startups and entrepreneurs to reach the next level. We’re proud to team up with some of the greatest co-working spaces in Hong Kong to host our teams for each session. Startup Next participants will discover KPMG, Blueprint, Brinc.io, Paperclip, the Infiniti Lab and the DBS Vault.

We are excited to announce the 7 teams that will take part of Startup Next Hong Kong this Fall 2015:

The program starts this Saturday and we will share teams’ updates on a regular basis. It is organised and facilitated by Jessica Cheung (Nest.vc), Mark Koester (Techstars), Tony Verb (Nest.vc) and Matthieu Bodin.

Interested in helping these teams, sponsoring or investing? Contact us at hk@startupnext.co for an introduction.